Customer service is an integral part of most businesses. An important part of customer service is getting to know your customers and catering to each individual customer's needs and preferences, making each one feel important. Personalized customer service may be important not only in retaining current customers with established relationships, but also in recruiting new customers as well. For example, a customer or potential customer receiving a marketing letter from a business may prefer to be addressed by his or her name rather than simply “Dear Customer.” Or for example, a customer may be more likely to respond to a marketing letter from the business if the letter included references or other information pertaining to the hobbies and/or interests of the customer (or potential customer). However for larger businesses, or business with a large number of customers or potential customers to be contacted, it may be very time consuming to individually draft newsletters or other messages catered specifically to each individual customer.
As referenced above, part of good customer service is getting to know your customer, knowing information such as their name, contact information, purchase history, hobbies and interests, and even likes and dislikes. Using this information it may be possible to better individually cater, for example, marketing newsletters to each customer or potential customer (e.g., target recipients). However manually drafting such newsletters based on the information gathered on each target recipient may be a very time consuming process, and may be impractical for businesses with a large number of target recipients.